Creating A Zero Waste Community with Nicole Chatterson

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Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE: 
Welcome back, and thanks for listening to the Team Lally Real Estate show home with a guaranteed sold program or we’ll buy it. I’m Adrienne and I’m Attilio. And if you have any questions, just give us a call at 7999596 or check us out online at Teamlally.com.

ATTILIO: 
Our guest today was born in Palmdale, California and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science and Policy at California State University Long Beach where she started working with a nonprofit group to research the Pacific Garbage Patch.

ADRIENNE: 
She moved to Hawaii not long after the research cruise and continued to work on the garbage patch issues. She started Zero Waste Oahu in 2019 after she finished her master’s in environmental anthropology. Please welcome our guest, Nicole Chatterson.

ATTILIO: 
Hi, Nicole.

NICOLE: 
Hi, thank you guys for having me.

ATTILIO:
Okay. Okay. You know, like we always like to start right off the bat with some questions about our introduction. What when we say the garbage, the Pacific Garbage Patch? Is that like a mobile home park somewhere where nobody wants to live? What is that?

NICOLE: 
Great question. Yeah, nobody wants it there. That’s for sure. Yeah, it’s a bunch of rubbish that is washed off shorelines from all around the world. And it’s kind of accumulated in a swirling mass of currents. So it’s kind of like a plastic soup.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, people think it’s like some solid thing. Like they’re gonna you know, maybe like, it was China will probably be establishing some kind of islands on top of it and selling it to people. They seem to be doing that in other parts of the world. But you, maybe they should, because half of it is 90% of the stuff while I’m bashing China here is probably made in China. That’s all in that patch. But so your nonprofit group, what made you decide to get involved with with your, your nonprofit group? And get it going?

NICOLE: 
Yeah, well, we’re doing this because there’s a lot of opportunities for us to reduce waste in the first place. Anytime you make stuff that’s designed to be thrown away, whether that’s shortlist packaging or products, you’re putting a lot of pressure on our recycling systems or landfills or waste incinerators. And that means a lot of that stuff is going to escape out into the environment, unfortunately, because there’s just too much to handle. So I was inspired to do something about that. We Zero Waste Oahu works through public education and engagement, we get people involved in, you know, advocating for better policies for asking their legislators to be proactive in reducing waste. And we also demonstrate what less wasteful systems can look like. So what would Zero Waste takeout look like? How do we get zero food waste coming out of homes? So we raise grant funding and donations to do that kind of thing.

ADRIENNE: 
So Nicole, what kinds of things are being pushed towards the legislator? For? For some upcoming laws? Is there anything that you guys are really advocating for?

NICOLE: 
Yeah, there’s two really hot topics in my book. One is, how can we guarantee food waste doesn’t end up in our incinerator or landfill? There’s such a need for locally produced fertilizer and soil amendments. And we could do that with all the food waste regenerating in the commercial and residential sector. So there’s some ideas about how we can incentivize that industry to continue growing and one of them is mandating that food waste cannot go into the landfill or incinerator. So I’m excited about how that that might for innovation and business solutions. Another policy I’m really excited about is called EPR. It stands for it stands for extended producer responsibility. So the idea is if you’re making a product that’s designed to be short lived, or packaging that’s designed to be used once and it’s not necessary for food safety or product safety, then there will be perhaps a tax or maybe you would get a tax incentive for making reusable packaging or truly recyclable packaging. Yeah.

ATTILIO: 
The Okay, so let’s get back to the like the analogy talked about with the water flow and then overflowing and bailing. Oh, yeah, talk about that, as far as what you mean by waste reduction is more important than actually than recycling, and use that analogy because I liked it. It was easy to

NICOLE: 
Yeah, I love that. So if your house was flooding say your you left your bathtub faucet on, your first action isn’t going to be to start bailing out about bathtub, your first action is going to be to turn off the faucet or turn off the water, because it’s impossible to solve the problem if all that water still dripping out. And it’s the same thing with our waste stream. If we’re producing too much waste, we’re never going to be able to catch up and create all the recycling systems, we need to deal with that. Nor are we going to have enough landfill space to deal with all of that way. So the idea is make less waste upfront, turn off that tap. And then we’ll create right sized recycling systems for the stuff that does exist.

ADRIENNE: 
So Nicole, on that note, what are some easy things that people can do at home to reduce turn off the faucet, turn that faucet off?

NICOLE: 
Yeah, turn off the tap. Well, I did not. I failed to plug this before. But on our website, which is zerowasteoahu.org We actually have a whole Zero Waste living guide that’s designed specifically for this island. So we’ve researched a bunch of different ways you can bring less waste wasteful practices into your life as a consumer into your life at home. So these range from options to there’s now composting subscription services, where you can keep your food waste out of the landfill and incinerator and then you deliver it or it’s picked up by a composting service and they give you healthy soil back which you can use for your home garden or donate or you don’t have to take the soil and they can donate it to farmers instead. Another thing we talk about on our website is zero waste refill store. So now there’s one in Kailua. There’s one in Pearl City, Kaimuki. Instead of getting your hands soap and dish soap and single use containers that probably won’t end up getting recycled. You can bring in any container you have doesn’t matter if it’s plastic, or glass or whatever. And just keep refilling it like I use my old Honey Bear jars now to refill at the stores. And that’s what all my laundry detergent it is they squeeze out perfectly. And none of that’s going into the rubbish stream.

ATTILIO: 
And then you never make that mistake ever again, putting that on your pancakes. But when you do it once, then the kids are alike. So let’s talk about you know, we talked about it on our live stream earlier was you know, are we going to be creating the ninth island of Oahu and I don’t mean Vegas, I’m talking about this big pile of trash. What’s going on with our landfills?

NICOLE: 
Yeah, so Waimanalo Gulch, which is the main landfill for the island is getting really close to capacity. And in fact, it was supposed to have been shut down years and years ago. So we’re getting to the tail end of that. And nobody’s raising their hand to say we want the next landfill in our backyard. Nobody wants the next landfill. Right? So how do we be proactive and, and make sure we’re citing as few landfills in the future as possible. And that’s really by reducing the amount of waste that goes in. We also have a landfill that’s designed specifically for construction and demolition waste. Yes. And that one’s going to shut down in in the next couple years. And so all of that is then going to be putting pressure on our primary landfill, which is also cool. So one thing I like to talk about there is the power that the building industry and homeowners have, when they’re demolition, demolishing, are there opportunities to deconstruct and instead donate some of that material to use when when that can happen. There’s places like Habitat for Humanity reuse Hawaii, that will take quality stuff like things that are still great, red wood paneling, all that kind of good stuff and keep it out of that landfill.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, people are like reusing that stuff. And then it’s it’s kind of like a cool thing to have in your house that you had something that might have its vintage. Pretty distressed. Vintage, vintage. That’s what I call my basketball shoes from eighth grade. It’s vintage. They don’t smell vintage. But anyway, the you know, talk about the H-power, pros and cons of H-power. What is H-power and tell us about the pros and cons?

NICOLE: 
Sure. So most of the trash that’s picked up on a wall who first is incinerated at a facility called H-power and in burning all of that rubbish. A little bit of energy is created which is used to power the grid. So somewhere between two and on a really, really good day maybe 10% of our energy needs. And another cool thing about this is the ash created gets buried in our landfill and you can imagine how much less ash is going in then unburned material right before you burn it. It’s a lot of stuff. When you bury the ash it’s a lot less material. So it makes the landfill lasts a little longer. Some of the cons is it actually produces a lot of greenhouse gas emission. So it’s not a very clean energy source. And when you’re burning all of the stuff that goes into rubbish, you’re actually creating a lot of toxic byproducts. So there are many people questioning whether or not it’s a healthy idea could be burying the stuff anywhere. The last thing that really blows my mind I nerd out on this stuff is we agree as the city and county as residents in the City and County of Honolulu to deliver 800,000 tons of trash every year to this facility. Because the facility makes money by selling energy from the trash. So if we don’t deliver that, we’re making up for their lost revenue. And that doesn’t incentivize waste reduction in incentivizes waste production, which is not what we want.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, it’s like, we’re like, make more garbage because we need more electricity. That’s not a good message or equation.

NICOLE:
No, let’s find better electricity sources. We can do that. We’re smart.

ATTILIO: 
You know what, I’m gonna do a public service announcement right now for all you people. I see this a lot. They go into their cars, and the car is idling, which is creating the most amount of pollution when your car is idling, and they’re on their phones, shut the car off or, you know, go look at your phone in the building where you’re at, they’ll go sit in your car for like half an hour. You know, so Instagrams, probably Instagram and Facebook is probably the reason and tick tock why we’re having more carbon monoxide. They should be taxed. Right? for that. Right. Yeah. But oh, recycling, because everybody’s people is always wondering in the back of their heads, is this really recycle chain? Or you know what I always thought? What if I put one GoPro that I’m willing to get rid of that would send Wi Fi or Bluetooth, the live stream the video and I just dropped a GoPro in the blue bin in the blue bin. See what happened then, and then I will see where’s this stuff really going? So what happens with that stuff that goes in the blue bin? Are they Is it for real? Are they yanking our chain,

NICOLE: 
it’s for real. As long as you’re putting recyclable stuff in there it is getting recycled, the City and County of Honolulu has contracts and ways of tracking that the material is at least getting to its destination port. What happens after the destination port, there might be some questions around. But most likely somebody’s buying it from the city and then selling it to another country usually to be recycled. So those people are motivated to recycle it. What doesn’t get recycled is the non recyclables in the blue band. So all of that gets sorted out by people. One common thing people try to recycle that they don’t think is recyclable is the like your six pack boxes or your cereal boxes. Those are actually paperboard and not currently recyclable in Honolulu, what’s recyclable? Yeah, I know blows everybody’s mind when I tell them that, like those tea boxes, too. They’re not actually considered cardboard cardboard. corrugated cardboard would be like your Amazon boxes.

ADRIENNE: 
Gotcha. So those are recyclable but not the cereal boxes, even though it has a little symbol. I

ATTILIO: 
mean, Captain Crunch,

ADRIENNE: 
even Captain Crunch, especially Captain Crunch, you

NICOLE: 
know? Yeah. And that brings me to the labels that causes a bunch of public confusion because the product manufacturers are not included. Technically, their product type packaging could be recycled. But recycling is part technical capacity and part what the market is willing to move around and nobody wants to recycle that paperboard. Nobody wants to buy it from Oahu who was so so

ADRIENNE: 
cool. Is that like only on Oahu? Or is that everywhere? Is it going to be specific state by state?

NICOLE:
I’ll tell you by county is how it works in Hawaii and most everywhere that I know of. So what you can recycle on Oahu is different than what you can recycle on Maui and on Big Island.

ATTILIO: 
We’re full size you can 00 res Oahu

ADRIENNE: 
I know. I’m just curious though, because like, then why would they put that on the cereal box if it’s not recyclable anywhere?

ATTILIO:
Because it’s a consumer. Yeah, yeah. Oh, kind of using waste marketing,

NICOLE:
wishful thinking and it removes a lot of guilt right as a customer I feel better when I’m buying something I believe isn’t gonna turn into trash. So people are smart and they know what makes their products a lot more palatable that their product packaging.

ATTILIO: 
Well it’s really like you said is helping out with the guilt.

ADRIENNE: 
So you can just go in yes that like the scoopers right like it down to earth you get the scoop or use put them into

ATTILIO: 
I just want to put my mouth under this big funnel of Captain Crunch and go straight into my mouth. That’s how I’m going to save the planet. Just straight in my mouth. You pour some milk right after

NICOLE: 
me like man from down to earth.

ATTILIO:
The so what inspired you to get involved with this organization or have this organization you’re running?

NICOLE:
I mean, if we look really, really early on, where I grew up in LA, I was about an hour and a half outside of LA, I grew up next to our landfill. So from the time time I was a tiny human until I left the house at 18, I watched all of our communities rubbish turn into a mountain, like right in front of us, and people would also dump in the field across the street from our house. So I think I had an awareness of, of the problem from a young age. And then the other big moment was, during undergrad, when I had the opportunity to join a research cruise to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. I mean, when once you’ve seen the amount of junk floating in there, it’s hard to turn back and I kind of solidified my path. So I’ve been building towards this nonprofit in a lot of different ways. I didn’t know if I wanted to start a nonprofit, originally, but for a bunch of different reasons that made sense.

ATTILIO: 
Where does most of your funding come from?

NICOLE:
So primarily a mix of funding from family foundations, and federal and municipal grants. So our composting project right now is USDA funding and City and County of Honolulu funding. And that’s helping us figure out how to work with other nonprofits to bring compost from restaurants in Chinatown to Waimanalo. Trust Family Foundation was one of our initial seed funders who believed in us before we had a ton of proof of concept. So yeah, there’s a long standing. Yeah. Yes. Thank you so much the prop Family Foundation. And then our other big recent project was was Noah. So that’s the arm of the federal government responsible for ocean health.

ATTILIO: 
Okay, well, that’s good to know. Because I, I thought he was talking about the guy that we put out to animals in pairs in the US not that Noah. Different Noah different. Noah, it’d be amazing if you’re still alive today. But anyway, you have a donate button, folks, it’s on the top right corner of the main website, hit that button and go make a difference. And Adrienne zerowasteoahu.org, zerowasteoahu.org. If you anyways, zerowasteoahu.org hit the donate button. If you’re at let’s talk to our business owners. And Adrienne, let’s tell them why they should be making a donation to how can it increase their profits? attract better candidates to work for them and retain the ones they got? Oh, Adrienne?

ADRIENNE: 
Well, I think that when when consumers see two companies that are in their perception, their perception, very similar, providing similar services, and they see that one company is regularly giving back to the community, whether it’s by donations or community service, and so forth, that they’re going to choose to do business with that company.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, something 95% of the time. The other thing too, is and we didn’t know this, because we do a lot of give backs, and supporting of our community, but people would come in and interview with us because of that. And they say I liked the way that you guys are participating in the community and giving back. And that’s why I chose to apply to come work for you all. So it helps with recruitment. And then it also helps with the retention of people that are feeling that they’re a part of something that’s bigger than just making money off of the product or service that they’re creating. So for you business owners out there, go donate, go donate, Adrienne and I for in behalf of Team Lally will be making a donation. And we hope you guys will do the same. All right. Is there any other Nicole any other topics or anything else or any other questions we should have asked you that we haven’t?

NICOLE: 
No, I think I’ll leave you all with a big Mahalo for your support and reaching out to build this relationship. And to everybody listening this idea of their ways can sound overwhelming pie in the sky impossible. And it’s not about doing perfect and being perfect. And getting to zero today. It’s about doing a little bit better. And when we’re all doing a little bit better. It makes a huge difference. It really does. Yeah. So don’t put too much pressure on yourself.

ADRIENNE: 
Yeah, just be aware. I mean, you’ve given us these little tips that we can do to make small changes. And if everyone makes a small change, then it’s going to make a big difference. Yeah.

ATTILIO: 
All right. Well, Nicole, thanks to you again. I know we will probably have you back on the show.

ADRIENNE: 
Yes. So we want to hear about these updates the updates in the legislator,

ATTILIO: 
we want you to be our past repeat offender guests on the show again and give us some updates on the legislation like Adrienne said, so thanks so much.

ADRIENNE: 
Thank you for all you do.

ATTILIO: 
Great. All righty.

NICOLE: 
Thank you guys.

ATTILIO:
What was your website again, Adrienne.

ADRIENNE:
Okay, so our listeners, you guys go and check it out. ZeroWasteoahu.org. Yeah, there’s a lot of helpful resource tabs that you can go click on and

ATTILIO: 
maybe we’ll add them as link to our sites where people can just go to our resource tab and click on that because, you know like the song in the church I heard the other day go make a difference. You can make a difference. Hit that donate button. Yeah, no, no, no, the donate button wasn’t in the song. But this will be your way, you know, in a small way when everybody does a little no one person has to do a lot. That’s ancient. Something proverb. Chinese proverb. Sure. Yeah. Just say ancient Chinese and it gives it any gives it all the authority that you want. When you say that. The we got a couple of minutes left.

ADRIENNE: 
I want to read a review before we wrap things up. This is Gablan, it was refreshing to work with a team that put my needs first Monika showed that she genuinely cared about my goals. I would highly recommend her to anyone looking for a committed, knowledgeable and helpful agent. She demonstrated excellent service and was very patient. Yeah, I probably asked her a million questions. Haha. She took the time to understand my needs and concerns. If you’re searching for a home Monika and Team Lally would be happy to help.

ATTILIO: 
Hey, I want to share something with you. This is a shout out to our agent Deb. Yes, she was awesome sauce on a big grande burrito. No, she didn’t go to a Mexican restaurant. She had a client that she had showed 19 homes to. They finally found the home they wanted. But they opened their own Jeep Gladiator. Yes. I don’t even know what that is. But anyway, it sounds big. Yeah. And they measured it. You know, you get the specs online and they measure the garage and they said it would fit fairly there. But they wanted her to actually go find a Jeep gladiator and park it in there. She went on Turo, or one of our other agents had a neighbor who had three of those on Turo and she rented or borrowed the car for a moment. Took the Jeep gladiator to the garage parked it and it took the pictures. And

ADRIENNE: 
it fits and it fits. Good job Deb. Anyway. Great teamwork to that. So just

ATTILIO: 
a little taste of the stuff that we go through to serve our clients.

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